Dreams of Land and Sky
by rallamajoop
Summary: Locked in his capsule in the Twilight Town mansion, Sora dreams of home. [Sora, Roxas, Riku]


_Set shortly before Kingdom Hearts II. Spoilers for KH/CoM/KHII. May even be a couple of references to Final Mix lurking in there somewhere if you watch closely._

* * *

Locked in his capsule in the Twilight Town mansion, Sora dreams of home. He dreams of their island, the lazy days under wide, blue skies. He dreams of chasing fish in the shallows, of finding mushrooms in the caves, of snoozing on the beach. He remembers playing ball with Tidus and Wakka, teasing Selphie about 'all that romantic mush', then trying to climb the Paopu tree when he thought no-one else was looking. He dreams of the day they decided to build the raft, of all the places they poached materials, of sitting on the jetty and staring out to sea and really wondering what might be beyond it for the first time. 

Sora dreams the sea beyond his island is the same sea of Neverland, that it becomes the ocean of Atlantica. He dreams the sharks of Atlantica have grown into Monstro. He dreams he escapes from Monstro's stomach to tumble out of the mouth of the Cave of Wonders. He dreams the palm trees of the desert of Agrabah are the same palm trees of home.

He dreams Traverse Town becomes Halloween Town becomes Hollow Bastion becomes the End of the World. His memories blur, and Sora dreams of worlds he's never even seen.

_Sora dreams he's waking up alone on the streets of Twilight Town with a black robed figure standing over him._

…he dreams he meets a black-robed figure in the chapel of Hollow Bastion.

…_he dreams he meets a black-robed figure on a dead beach in a world that never will be._

…he dreams he meets a black-robed figure on the deserted crossroads on the way to Castle Oblivion in the middle of the night.

…_he dreams the figure in the black robe is him, is everyone he knows. _

Sora loses track again, and the sequence loops, never-ending. He doesn't wake.

In his featureless, four walled room in the Organisation's castle of The World that Never Was, Roxas dreams of a home that never belonged to him. He dreams of places he's never been, of people he doesn't recognise. He travels entire worlds without a single feature that ever comes into focus. He dreams names and faces he forgets the moment people turn away, of an entire empty universe filled with faceless dusks instead of people. It's like a book full of empty pages, a non-story with no setting, no characters, no beginning and no end.

Nobodies are incomplete by nature, born with the saw-edge ache of emptiness where the heart would be beating in their chests. But Roxas isn't missing just a heart, he's lost his memory too, so maybe the dreams are something similar – what's left in the place it used to be.

He wakes, rolls over and glares into the pillow - not that that solves anything - swears he's making someone find him a better room. Tomorrow morning, if not sooner. Right now he'd happily bunk with Larxenne, if it only meant he dreams about something real.

He doesn't want to know what the dreams mean. He just wants to simple freedom to forget whatever he's forgotten, especially if those memories aren't ever coming back.

Sora dreams of Naminé and of Kairi; sometime one and sometimes the other, sometimes both of them; sometimes he's not sure which is which. He dreams he and Naminé watch a meteor shower from the beach, that Naminé is scared because she just saw one land. He dreams he goes to investigate the fallen meteor and finds Kairi curled in a ball on the sand. He dreams Kairi disappeared one day when he was very young. He dreams Naminé is making a lucky charm of thalassa shells. He dreams he peers over Kairi's shoulder to see what she's drawing in her sketchpad. He dreams he and Naminé scribble on the cave walls in chalk.

_He dreams he saw Naminé once or twice across a crowded room, in a corner all alone. She's the only high level Nobody never invited to join the Organisation. There was always something familiar about her in a way that he can't rationalize and doesn't understand, that makes him uncomfortable. _

Sora dreams they all play hide and seek, that he searches the whole island and can't find either of them. Sora doesn't wake.

In a dusty bedroom in the Twilight Town mansion, Riku dreams of a home he doesn't honestly believe he ever deserves to see again. He dreams of sparring on the beach with the other children. He dreams of lounging on the storm-flattened trunk of the Paopu tree. He remembers Tidus and Wakka staging a team ambush in one last ditch attempt to get the best of him; Selphie thwacking him over the head with her nunchucks for not paying attention. He remembers meeting Kairi for the first time – the girl from a whole other world – and of showing her their secret place in the island cave. He dreams of finding the keyhole in the door that wouldn't open, and one day, out of the blue, of a voice in his head that told him what he needed to do. He dreams of feeling the islands start to come apart beneath him, and not caring.

He doesn't dream of Sora. It's all he can do to guess which are the spaces in those memories where Sora should have been, which were spaces all along.

On the worst nights though, there's no island; save the versions that begin on its tattered remains. Then Riku dreams of golden eyes and an echoing laugh and the suffocating feel of a whole other kind of darkness, thick enough to swallow worlds. There's a mind somewhere inside him that loves nothing more than to show him what would have been if what he dreamt were real, if Sora never existed at all. Ansem may lie defeat and dormant, but his offer to Riku was never officially retracted. No matter how much the thought of it disgusts him the possibility is still there – and besides, it's never been Ansem he was really most afraid of…

There's an ornate standing mirror by his bed. He moved it there from across the room a few weeks after he moved in here. When he wakes up from some of those nightmares it gives him the exact first thing he needs to see – that the face in that mirror is still his own.

It's not so bad, really. Usually by the time he gets back here, he's tired enough that he collapses into bed and doesn't remember anything else until morning. He wakes some days, says Sora's name aloud and _makes_ himself remember. He's lucky – most of the people who ever knew Sora don't even have that much.

So much for being there to tease Sora when he wakes up from his 'nap'. How many months has it been?

Sora dreams of Castle Oblivion, fragments that pop up when memories link up in places they aren't supposed to, and bits come swimming back. He dreams of chasing black-robed figures through half-remembered worlds. He dreams of a man called Marluxia who speaks in riddles, a woman called Larxenne who rubs his nose in mistakes he doesn't remember making, a man called Vexen who's idea of 'science' is showing off all the things he knows and you don't. He dreams of meeting Axel, a madman who'll take down his own friends or innocent children on nothing more than a whim. He dreams they're _all_ standing between him and Naminé, and the higher he climbs, the less anything else matters but that.

_He dreams Larxenne has an annoying laugh and that the only thing she ever liked about him was the nice coincidence that his inclusion in the Organisation meant she moved out of the bottom spot. He dreams that Vexen has an icy smile and looks at him like he's concocting new experiments; that Marluxia has a way eyeing his keyblades with the utmost fascination, like their owner isn't even present._

_He dreams Axel's telling him that human memories of a real heart are nothing to be jealous of – all they're good for is making whatever you've got there instead feel that much more like ash in your chest, that he makes it sound casual enough that Sora almost believes him. _

_He dreams he puts up with all of them and worse, because they're still that much better than nothing, and they're all he's got. _

Sora dreams of knowing how much he's forgotten, but holding on to that belief that what he still remembers are the things that matter most. He dreams of finding out how wrong he was.

Sora doesn't wake.

Lately, Roxas' dreams star the Keyblade. _The_ Keyblade, implying singular, though it has never offered any complaints about splitting itself in two when Roxas wields it. In some of those dreams, it deserves the definite article even less. Roxas dreams of the keyblade in the hands of other wielders, old and young, one or more, designs he does and doesn't recognise. He dreams an entire field of abandoned keyblades, as many as the stars. A weapon born of light, weighted down by a thousand years of forgotten history; that chooses only those with the strongest hearts as its master. It's scarcely an appropriate weapon for a Nobody who can't even remember his real name.

Roxas isn't the only keyblade master, not even now. Mere weeks after Roxas joined the Organisation, a member two ranks above him staged an attempt to take control. The main act of Marluxia's short lived rebellion was to tempt a Keyblade master by the name of Sora into Castle Oblivion and launch an elaborate plot to manipulate the boy into doing his bidding. Stationed in the castle basement, Zexion discovered a second interloper who'd seemed to have followed Sora there and launched a similar attempt in retaliation. The few reports that escaped from Castle Oblivion say the two boys tore through the place, taking down everyone who stood in their path, traitor and ally alike. The Organisation lost more a third of its members within that single night.

Axel, the suspiciously lonely survivor of the Castle Oblivion fiasco, met Sora while he was there. But he never said much about it, and Roxas never got around to asking, and now he's increasingly sure Axel couldn't begin to tell him what he wants to know; if Roxas even knew how to phrase the questions he wants answered.

There won't be any answers as long as he stays here.

Riku goes to Naminé first. A room upstairs is hers, but the basement white room is where she's usually found, standing as though in communion before Sora's pod. He used to come here after some of those empty dreams, to catch a glimpse of Sora's face through the misty glass; but it felt uncomfortably like voyeurism and Naminé won't work any faster with him staring over her shoulder.

"Riku?" It doesn't matter to her whether he's here to see her or Sora. "When did you get back?"

"Last night. Don't let me interrupt."

She shakes her head. "It's nice to have company. DiZ doesn't come down here much." DiZ never makes for much company anyway.

He watches, waits. Finally, says, "It's taking too long, isn't it?"

Naminé doesn't turn away from what she's doing, which is fine, Riku wouldn't ask her to. "Something is interfering with the way Sora's memories are putting themselves back together."

"What kind of something?"

"I don't know. I don't know how to stop it either."

There are too many questions he could be asking now, too many things he should have realised already and no time to waste with any of them. He has to stick to what he needs to know. "How bad is it? Is it something you can get past?"

"Maybe. I think so," She wants to tell him yes. This is the one thing she can do for any of them and it's the answer he wants to hear, but her days of weaving elaborate dreams at the expense of reality are long over. "But at this rate… I don't know how much longer it's going to take."

Riku goes to DiZ second. He says, "Naminé told me something's interfering with her work restoring Sora." The name sounds like a strangers.

DiZ turns so that Riku is in sight of his good eye. The few visible parts of his face betray bemusement, but he doesn't comment aloud on Riku's characteristically brief approach to announcing himself. He says, "Your timing is unusually good today. How much do you know about the Nobody organisation, the Thirteenth Hour?"

Riku says, "I met a few of them at the castle. I took one down, the others got away. I think Sora took care of the rest of them." Though DiZ already knows all that. Riku doesn't mention any encounters he might have had since; or how many of the once neigh-unheard of Nobodies he's seen or caught uncomfortably close to the mansion in the past months.

Seventeen neat keystrokes pull up a rotating image of a young blond boy with an Organisation cloak and an empty expression. "Here's your 'interference' – this is one of their younger members. Bring him here – intact. I have information that suggests he left their headquarters not long ago. If Sora is to be woken before they start to move in earnest, we can't afford to waste this opportunity. I won't insult someone with your familiarity with the world of darkness by telling you where to start looking." The air is heavy with everything DiZ isn't saying.

Riku makes himself look at the image long enough to memorise that face. He says, "Make sure you have everything you need ready for when I get back." He's already halfway to the door before he finishes.

DiZ says, "Aren't you going to ask anything else?"

Riku says, "If I bring this guy back, we can help Sora right?" There's confirmation in DiZ's one visible eye. "That's all I need to know."

Sora dreams of Riku, the best friend he's known for as long as he can remember. He dreams of watching Riku vanish into darkness, of meeting him again to discover he's barely Riku anymore at all.

Sora dreams of meeting Riku for the first time, perched atop a skyscraper in a city that never sees sun. He dreams of fighting Riku in the Hollow Bastion hallway, in the World that Never Was. He dreams he wins, that Riku can't understand why someone like him can use the keyblade at all.

Sora dreams of a man who called himself 'Ansem', of fighting him on the broken remains of his island, in the World that Never Was; the hardest battle of his life, the start of a whole new journey he never intended to take.

He dreams he's searching for Sora, and in every world, in every way, that much always stays true.

At long last, Sora starts to wake.


End file.
